


I'm Calling, Calling (Is Your Line Disconnected?)

by GhostCwtch



Series: JaegerconBingo Fills [3]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Can be read as pre-slash, Gen, K-Science, abuse of run on sentences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 16:17:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostCwtch/pseuds/GhostCwtch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann finds the disconnect harder to deal with than the Drift itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Calling, Calling (Is Your Line Disconnected?)

**Author's Note:**

> For my "The Drift" square in Jaeger Bingo.

Breaking the Drift is like surfacing from a lake into a cave. Hermann is blind and deaf and can only just claw his way to one side, feeling like everything he's eaten in the past year is crawling up and out of his throat. Newt, Newton, Newt is fine, he thinks, but doesn't know because they're not connected and it _hurts_.  
  
Is this what it's like for the pilots every time? This shattering disconnect of being so much more than an individual mind suddenly severed and crammed back into a useless body? He doesn't think so. The thought of having to suffer this over and over again, getting worse with each separation, because it would get worse… Hermann shudders and retches again.  
  
Stretching a hand backwards, he knows that Newt will bring him a handkerchief to wipe his mouth. He knows that the other scientist will crowd into his space and that he will accept it where never has before.  He knows because he has been in Newt's mind, seen his thought processes, methods.  
  
He knows, and he doesn't. He doesn't know for certain the way he would have a moment ago. The way he would if they were using proper equipment and Drifting with a machine instead of the half dead and rotting brain of a newly born and dead kaiju infant. He thinks he knows, based on presumptions from the data at hand, but it's not the same as the knowing of before.  
  
A warm hand closes over the back of his neck, the other bunching in his parka. Keeping his weight on his good leg, he turns to lock eyes with Newt. There's an echo of the Drift in that, looking into Newt's eyes and being so close to following the thoughts that he can see racing in there, the pupils blown wide, blood vessels burst in the left and both scanning his face, searching for something.  
  
He wants to climb back into that skull, wrap himself in an other person's thoughts, drown out the screams of panic and the crash of waves against the Shatterdome. He wants to remember getting his first tattoo. He wants to remember the absolute fascination with the creature bursting out across their world. He wants to forget what it is to be himself.  
  
Newt shakes him gently, drawing him back out of his head and back to the gaze still locked on his own.  
  
"The plan. The bomb."  
  
"It's not going to work."


End file.
